GENETICS How accurate is this Elmenteitan reconstruction?

[Juke]

The artist has been making reconstructions for a couple years now. I don't sense any bias or racism in his other works. Still, why does this South Cushite from the Kenyan rift valley look like an Abdalla??

Compared to modern people, they're supposed to be most closest to Somalis

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Their Eurasian:Sub-Sahran African ratio is the same as ours however their SSA ancestry is less Proto-Nilotic and more Omotic-like HG as compared to us.

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Does that explain the unexpected appearance of this reconstruction?

Another aspect that makes me doubt the accuracy is the artist labeled this reconstruction of Elmenteitan A as Mesolithic, although he initially believed it should be dated around pastoral Neolithic. I think he's an amateur, as his references say there's older (Mesolithic) HG samples mixed with the Cushitic Neolithic types.

His other works: https://www.deviantart.com/philipedwin/gallery/all

His reference for the reconstruction (it's in Russian): https://antropogenez.ru/zveno-single/317/

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[The alchemist]

I have been against validating these facial reconstruction bullshit from the beginning, bro. Had some artist made a sketch, or an elaborate drawing of those people, that would be as valid, in my opinion.

Just look at the dude, what could have possibly inspired the pseudo-science artist to give the guy hazel eyes, or whatever the heck the shade of eye-color it is categorized as. Forget the facial thickness dimensions, which are impossible to gauge properly, and focus on the apparent traits, that dude looks nothing like current East Africans in all its diverse mosaic forms.

The Elementeita folks were in the same genetic cluster as Pastoral Neolithic herders, the only difference was a distinct cultural lifeway. There might have been just a handful of foragers that happen to maybe partake in some of their material culture, but they were very distinct from those hunter-gatherers. So yeah, in conclusion, those people belonged to a Neolithic culture. I don't know where he got Mesolithic from.

 

[rhinowrangler]

It isn’t a reconstruction of elementian culture. That skull the reconstruction is based of is from the Mesolithic. It’s thousands of years before and they would have been some of the early Eurasian migrants into Kenya . That’s why they wouldn’t look identical to Somalis. Eurasian groups were in Kenya prior to Somalia.

 

[Juke]

It isn’t a reconstruction of elementian culture. That skull the reconstruction is based of is from the Mesolithic. It’s thousands of years before and they would have been some of the early Eurasian migrants into Kenya . That’s why they wouldn’t look identical to Somalis. Eurasian groups were in Kenya prior to Somalia.

Correct me if I'm wrong. The Mesolithic dating of Elmenteitan A was done on the assumption that all the bones found at Bromhead's site cemetery were contemporary.

"The UCLA radiocarbon sample was processed under the assumption that a mixture of skeletal parts of different individuals who are contemporary should yield a date of that time period."​

Elmenteitan A skull wasn't a part of the fragments that were dated. The radiocarbon dating was done on a mixed group of fragments that didn't include the skull.

"epiphyses of fibulae and ossa calcis of several juveniles, tali of at least three individuals, several lumbar vertebrae, parts of two left femora, parts of three tibiae, and fragmentary pieces of humeri".​

"Future absolute dating should concentrate on a comparison of individual dates of different skeletons"​

Stratification at the site was poor and samples were mixed together with the changing water levels. Isn't it possible they conflated the Mesolithic HGs with the Eurasian pastoralists?

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[Luffy]

I once read that when our ancestors arrived from North Africa, their skin and features were not very African, but with time and mixing with the local population, they had a different, independent look.And they became more African

 

[datesfrompuntland]

@Step a side do Elmenteitan 8kys have anything to do with South Cushitic 4-5kya, I can't find any genetic studies on the hunter gatherers.

 

[Step a side]

@Step a side do Elmenteitan 8kys have anything to do with South Cushitic 4-5kya, I can't find any genetic studies on the hunter gatherers.

Yes they were genetically similar to the other Neolithic pastoral/herders nearby.

 

[BidaarBoy]

@Step a side do Elmenteitan 8kys have anything to do with South Cushitic 4-5kya, I can't find any genetic studies on the hunter gatherers.

There are no genetic studies done on any 8k year old hunter gatherers over there

 

[Juke]

Fret not peeps, homie revised the reconstruction

 

[The alchemist]

Fret not peeps, homie revised the reconstruction

I think the guy who posted it here the first time was the one who made it, lol. I don't know why they are classing it as a Mesolithic. Elmenteitan PN was a horizon from ~1000 BC to 1300 CE. Sure, there was a carrying over of some material artifacts from the hunter-gatherers that culturally diffused some lithic tradition and perhaps some pottery, but the hunter-gatherer and the pastoral culture were discontinuous. There was a blunder with chronology and type-site definitions in Kenya. What is considered Elmenteitan hunter-gatherer by an early archeologist is not the PN Elmenteitan.

Anyway, why put a goofy skirt on the guy? Looks stupid. Not even hunter-gatherers wear something like that.

The guy put the Hofmeyer Skull as completely African when it in all measures fit UP West Eurasian morphometrics the best:

It is the most interesting thing no one talks about. How in the world did a Eurasian heavy UP person end up in South Africa?

Read about it here:

You should check out the Hofmeyr Skull. It dates to 36kya from its archeological context (not radiocarbon dating) in South Africa! Why is this strange? It has the skull variation of Upper Paleolithic Western Eurasians (close to the broader clusters of Europeans). For three years now, I have wondered how that person ended up in South Africa, and it revolutionizes how we view Africa's demographic picture, where we have to account for dynamic variational fluxes. Remember, people of that time had high mobility bandwidth.

I think that individual was from North Africa or there is something very unprecedented with the pre-historic picture of prehistoric Africa masked by later gene-flow overturns.

"Against the dearth of late Pleistocene human skeletal remains from sub-Saharan Africa stands a nearly complete cranium from Hofmeyr, South Africa, which has been dated to approximately 36 ka through a combination of optically-stimulated luminescence and uranium-series methods (Grine et al., 2007). Preliminary assessment indicates its strongest morphometric affinities to be with Upper Paleolithic Eurasians rather than recent, geographically proximate people (Grine et al., 2007). This observation is potentially significant in view of the geochronological age of the Hofmeyr skull and the ability of craniometric data to differentiate recent human populations in accord with their geographic and genetic relationships (Howells, 1973, 1989; Lahr, 1996; Ribot, 2003, 2004; Relethford, 2004; Roseman, 2004; Roseman and Weaver, 2004; Harvati and Weaver, 2006; Martinez-Abadias et al., 2006; González-José et al., 2008; Varela et al., 2008).

The results of the study by Grine et al. (2007), which must be regarded as preliminary owing, in part, to the limited late Pleistocene cranial sample employed, are nevertheless consistent with the hypothesis that Upper Paleolithic Eurasians descended from a population that emigrated from sub-Saharan Africa in the late Pleistocene. As such, the Hofmeyr cranium affords the first potential insights into the morphology of this African population."
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.02.007 (Grine et al., 2010)

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DOI: 10.1126/science.1136294 (Grine et al., 2007)

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To answer your question, the past was complex. I don't think one should bet against anything. I think the concept of SSA is nothing but obstructive. But then again, we need labels - without them, it would be hard to have a conversation. The issue is when the intrinsic shortcomings and errors of the labels define future discourse which we see much of. Frankly, there is no such thing as Sub-Saharan Africa. Go and model a South African as a stand-in for our East African DNA and see the divergence.

The example you game regarding using Ust-Ishim to delineate supposed late middle Stone Age backmigration gene flow can be interesting in that it can explain the relative relationship within African diversity that Ust-Ishim shows closer correspondence - a strict within Africa diversity where the model is only showing difficult interpretive significance (what is sectioned off to various proxies might not be true component differentiations; it's the weakness with thinking existing proxies can reveal greater deep diversity). Or it can be a level of likeness indicating back migration, indeed. We don't know. I don't think both sides and even more explanations are exclusive. Everything is likely correct. We're dealing with great time-depths and so many things happening. It is very interesting, right?

Funny enough, I found one Somaloid guy who looked similar to the first reconstruction:

It's some Kenyan politician. I'm not using random people's private photos.

 

[NidarNidar]

Fret not peeps, homie revised the reconstruction

I doubt they looked like that, that picture resembles the Hadza of Tanzania more than anything else.